


without the gaud

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: 3 Sentence Fiction, Cologne, Gen, Journals, McBurney as an artist, Perspectives, Prayer, Season 2, Tension, a hospital chaplain's work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-04 14:30:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18606424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: Three vignettes, three sentences, perspectives on Clayton McBurney III. EDITED: Now, four!





	1. Chapter 1

It was very hard to pray for the soul of Major Clayton McBurney III. Henry’s hands were clasped tightly, knuckles white; it would be easier to scrub clean the floorboards beneath Hale’s latest bungled amputation. Emma would argue with him as to the necessity of it but Mary would nod, her dark eyes understanding what faith demanded, unequivocally, smallness encountering greatness, a leaf falling away from an oak.


	2. Chapter 2

“Major McBurney positively reeks of lemon verbena! Did he use a whole bottle of pomade?” Emma said, her exclamation forced into a whisper, just this side of a hiss.

“I think it’s cologne—it must remind him of someone or maybe it helps him to forget,” Mary replied, thinking of the rose-petals crushed in her handkerchief, the scent of them earth now and dust, nothing left of summer.


	3. Chapter 3

“He can’t suture worth a damn,” Anne said. Jed knew she meant McBurney by the particular acid of her tone, the way she lingered on the obscenity. He knew she meant it as some consolation, the only words she offered since she’d explained, since they’d reached a teeth-rattling pace in the wagon, the failing light flickering through the trees like a message.


	4. Chapter 4

Jed never showed anyone the journals McBurney left behind, crammed in the desk drawer; they might as well have been a nest of writhing vipers, each more venomous than the next. He’d cursed aloud when he found the one about Mary, the drawings obscene, delicate, the writing crabbed and perverse and clearly the work of a desperate man, desperately in love. Jed burned them all, then drank the last dram in the last bottle Summers had left, the old man’s final consolation in the burn of the gold liquor, the softening of the edges, the remove it offered from the impulse to murder.

**Author's Note:**

> Thought I'd write a few three sentence fics on the character du jour, Clayton McBurney. The title is taken from tortoiseshells's favorite Melville poem.


End file.
